28 May, 2012

The Life-Wasting Potion

Many, many years ago everyone was
strong and healthy. They ate a very varied diet, and especially loved fruit,
vegetables, and fish. Everyone took daily exercise, and they enjoyed themselves
playing and leaping about. The Earth was the healthiest place you could
imagine, and it was clear that both adults and children were full of joy and
good moods.

All that made the dark witches
furious. They only ever wanted to do harm and make problems for people. The
worst of all of these witches was Sour face; she was evil, and could be relied
on to come up with the nastiest ideas. She suggested that all the witches
combine their energies to invent a potion which would take away people's desire
to live happily. So, one night, all the witches gathered down in the swampy
forest and worked together on that evil spell. The spell was so powerful, and
would need so much energy to cast, that when one of the witches got one of the
words wrong, there was a huge explosion. So big was the explosion, that it completely
destroyed the forest.

It turned all those evil witches
into tiny little creatures, like germs, and left them trapped in a green liquid
inside a small glass bottle, which lay lost in the swamp. There they were
trapped for centuries, until one day a little boy found the bottle. Thinking it
contained some kind of soft drink, he drank the lot. The evil, microscopic
witches took advantage of this situation, and even though they were tiny and
couldn't hurt anyone, they soon learned to change the little boy's likes and
dislikes in order to get him to do what they wanted.

In a few days, a funny feeling in
his mouth and tongue meant the boy no longer wanted to eat vegetables, fruit,
or fish. All he wanted to do was eat ice cream, pizza, burgers, and candy. Then
a nibbling feeling all over his body meant he no longer enjoyed playing and
running about with his friends. All that stuff tired him out; he now just
wanted to stay in the house, sitting or lying about. So, his life got more and
more boring, he started feeling ill, and before long he had no desire to do
anything. The evil potion had worked! And the worst thing of all was that the
witches learned to jump from one person to another, like a virus. They managed
to turn the influence of the potion into the most contagious of diseases: the
disease of wasting your life.

It was a long while before, with
the help of his microscope, Doctor Fitton-Helthie discovered that the little
witches were causing all this disease. There was no vaccine or cough mixture to
get rid of them, but the good doctor discovered that the witches could not
stand joy and good humour. It turned out that the best cure was to make a
strong effort to live a healthy, joyful, and happy life. When a person became
healthy, the little witches would leave that body as soon as they could, riding
off on a sneeze.

From then on, the best remedy was
not pills or injections, but just a little bit of effort to eat some fruit,
vegetables, and fish, and to do some exercise. And whoever came to see Doctor
Fitton-Helthie, and took his advice, ended up totally well, being cured of the
waste-of-life disease.

Although you have to make some
effort to live a healthy and happy life, it pays to eat a little of everything,
and do some exercise.